Skip to content

School of Geography and the Environment

University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Dr Andrew Barry

Academic Profile

Andrew Barry joined the School of Geography and the Environment in January 2006. Andrew studied Natural Sciences and the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University and subsequently completed a D.Phil. at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. He has previously held posts at Brunel University and Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he was Reader in Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (CSISP). He has been Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Istanbul Technical University and Visiting Scholar at the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University.

Andrew was the winner of the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize from the British Sociological Association in 2002. He is on the editorial board of Economy and Society, the editorial advisory board of Environment and Planning D; International Political Sociology; Social Movement Studies, the ESF panel of experts (2006-7), and is on the advisory board of the British Film Institute project on 'Moving Images in the Public Sphere'. He has been an invited speaker at numerous events including: Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics; Centre International de Cérisy; École des Mines de Paris; Universities of Rome, Oslo, New South Wales, Auckland, Sciences Politiques, etc.

Current Research

Andrew's research interests span political and economic geography, social and anthropological theory, and science and technology studies. He has recently completed two empirical research projects. One, Social and human rights impact assessment and the governance of technology, is a study of the politics of corporate social responsibility and transparency in the oil industry. This project relates to a broader interest in the role of expertise in political and economic life, developing from his earlier book, Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society (Athlone Press 2001). Following on from this project he has established an School of Geography and the Environment Oil Research Group and is developing a series of further projects on the governance and politics of oil. He has a particular interest in research in Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and was co-organiser (with Meltem Ahiska and Yael Navaro-Yashin) of a conference on 'Thinking through Turkey', held in Cambridge University in June 2007.

A second empirical project, in collaboration with Marilyn Strathern and Georgina Born from Cambridge University, Interdisciplinarity and Society, is a comparative study of interdisciplinary research involving a survey of major interdisciplinary collaborations involving natural scientists and either social scientists and/or artists worldwide.

Andrew has also written widely on social theory and the philosophy of social science, and co-edited collections of papers on Foucault and Political Reason (with Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose), the Technological Economy (with Don Slater) and the sociology and philosophy of Gabriel Tarde (with Nigel Thrift). As well as academic publications, he has also recently been involved in a project on political representation with the designer Lucy Kimbell, called Pindices: demonstrating matters of public concern.

Selected Research Projects (since 2001)

Teaching

Dr Barry lectures on 'Science and Politics' and 'Global and Local' for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy. He also teaches Global Politics and Government for the Undergraduate Final Honours School and co-convenes the undergraduate course on Spaces of Politics with Dr Derek McCormack. Andrew is a Tutorial Fellow in Human Geography at St Catherine's College.

Current graduate students include:
  • Jennifer Barth
    Taste, ethics and the market in Guatemalan coffee. An ethnographic study.
  • Erin Freeland-Ballantyne
    Sustainability's Paradox: Petro-capitalism, climate change and indigenous resistance in northern Canada: The case for indigenous environmental governance.
  • Dominique Henri
    The integration of Inuit traditional ecological knowledge and western science in wildlife and resource management in Nunavut, Canada.
  • Kärg Kama
    Contested Futures: Oil shale reserves, anticipatory knowledge and politics in Estonia
  • Nina Kruglikova
    Environmental NGOs and Eco-Media technologies: An ethnographic study.
  • Caitlin McElroy
    Corporate social responsibility in the extractive and energy industries: Effects on resource use and indigenous development.

Selected Publications

Books:
Edited Journals (special issues):
Articles:
Articles in Edited Collections:
  • Barry, A. (2007) Political Invention. In, Asdal, K., Brita, B., and Moser, I. (eds.) The Politics of interventions: a history of STS. Oslo: Oslo Academic Press.
  • Barry, A. (2006) Michel Foucault. In, Carver, T., and J. Martin (eds.) Contemporary Political Thought. Basingstoke: Palgrave. pp. 244-259.
  • Barry, A. (2006) On interactivity, extract from Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society. In, Hassan, R., and J. Thomas (eds.) The New Media Theory Reader. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
  • Barry, A. (2006) Social Studies of Science. In, Harrington, A., Marshall, B., and H.-P. Müller (eds.) Encyclopedia of Social Theory. London: Routledge. pp. 569-570.
  • Barry, A. (2006) Actor-Network Theory. In, Harrington, A., Marshall, B. and H.-P. Müller (eds.) Encyclopedia of Social Theory. London: Routledge. pp. 4-5.
  • Barry, A. (2006) Bruno Latour. In, Harrington, A., Marshall, B. and H.-P. Müller (eds.) Encyclopedia of Social Theory. London: Routledge. pp. 312-313.
  • Barry, A. (2005) Writing the History of the Present. Extract from, Barry, A., Osborne, T., and N. Rose (eds.) (1996) Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government, in, Joseph, J. (ed.) Social Theory: a Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Barry, A. (2005) The British-Georgian case: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. In, Latour, B., and C. Gramaglia (eds.) Territoires, environnement et nouveaux modes de gestion: la gouvernance en question. Paris: CNRS. pp. 105-118.
  • Barry, A. and L. Kimbell (2005) Pindices. In, Latour, B., and P. Weibel (eds.) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press.
  • Barry, A. (2005) The Anti-Political Economy. In, Barry, A. and D. Slater (eds.) The Technological Economy. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 84-100.
  • Barry, A. (2004) Ethical Capitalism. In, Larner, W., and W. Walters (eds.) Global Governmentality. London: Sage. pp. 195-211.
  • Barry, A. (2004) Organics. In, Harrison, D., Pile, S., and N. Thrift (eds.) Patterned Ground: Ecologies and Geographies of Nature and Culture. London: Reaktion. pp. 248-249.
  • Barry, A. (2002) In the middle of the network. In, Law, J., and A. Mol (eds.) Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. pp. 142-165.
Interdisciplinary Projects
  • Barry, A. and L. Kimbell (2005) Pindices, Gallery project, public experiment, website and live research, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Making Things Public (curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel), March-October 2005 and at London Gallery West, University of Westminster, November 2005-January 2006.
Conference organisation:
  • Barry, A., Fraser, M., Toscano, A. and G. Weszkalnys (2007) Conference on Oil and Politics, SOAS, London, May.
  • Ahiska, M., Barry, A. and Y. Navaro-Yashin (2007) Thinking through Turkey, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, June.
  • Barry, A., Born, G. and G. Weszkalnys (2007) Colloquium on Interdisciplinarity and Society, St Catherine's College, Oxford, February.
  • Barry, A. and N. Thrift (2005) Workshop on Gabriel Tarde: Psychology, Economy and Invention, Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths College.
  • Barry, A., Fraser, M. and M. Halewood (2004) Conference on Whitehead, Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths College, June.
  • Barry, A., Callon, M., and T. Mitchell (2004) Workshop on Inside/Outside Markets, École des Mines Paris, June.
  • Barry, A., Callon, M., and D. Slater (2003) Workshop on Innovating Markets, London School of Economics, April.
  • Barry, A. (in collaboration with the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge) (2003) Workshop on Inside Ethics, Girton College, Cambridge, January.
  • Barry. A., Fraser, M., and M. Greco (2002) Workshop on Cosmopolitics with Isabelle Stengers Goldsmiths College, March.